


A Wonderful Thing

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Being Human (UK) Fusion, Angst, Bisexual Clint Barton, Blood Drinking, Death, Drama, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Brock Rumlow/Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Past Bucky Barnes/Natasha Romanov, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Skinny Steve Rogers, Supernatural Elements, Trauma, Vampires, Violence, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22811869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost share a walk-up in Brooklyn… (A 'Being Human' AU)
Relationships: Clint Barton & James "Bucky" Barnes & Wanda Maximoff, Clint Barton/Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff & Wanda Maximoff, Pietro Maximoff/Natasha Romanov
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

The exterior door creaked in protest as it was pushed open, and the real estate agent nearly tripped on a piece of broken tile stepping inside. But she recovered so gracefully that Bucky and Clint couldn’t help grinning at her in admiration.

The rainy gray of daylight crept into the front hall. There were more broken tiles, a dusty concrete staircase, and a row of dented metal mailboxes set into the wall. Although the place looked sad and neglected, the fresh air rushing in through the front door livened the old building in ways Bucky and Clint both felt, but couldn’t describe.

As the three of them climbed the stairs together, their agent, a dauntless woman in her mid-40s named Judy, began her spiel. “I know it’s not very pretty to look at, Mr. Barton,” she said to Clint, who was casting around an uncertain eye, “but if you pulled these walls down and saw into the heart of the building, you’d have nothing to worry about.”

“The heart of the building,” he echoed.

Judy nodded. Once they reached the landing, she led them to the closest unit and drew a key from her pocket. “In other words, the pipes and wiring; the insulation; the reinforced beams--”

“What happened to the ‘good bones’ metaphor?” Bucky cut in. “Too grim?”

Judy’s thin smile reminded him distantly of the _thwack_ of wooden rulers across his knuckles. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door, then the tour began in earnest. She called their attention to various amenities and the abundance of natural lighting from the living-room windows facing the street, among other selling points, and they nodded mutely in unison.

Honestly, the place wasn’t half bad. _Not even a quarter bad,_ Bucky thought, somewhat suspiciously, as he dawdled in the kitchen, testing the faucet and poking his head under the sink to inspect for drips. A 2 bed/1 bath in Prospect Heights at the price it was listed online had to have been a mistake. Or a joke. He and Clint could probably lease the whole building for a song. Obviously, there was something about it that kept other people from snapping it up. Something Judy hadn’t shared with them.

He took a step toward the living room next when something appeared in his peripheral vision; the door to the unit had been left open, and a small figure was beginning to edge its way inside. But just as Bucky turned his head, the figure slipped out of sight. A strange tingle shot down his spine. He stared, unblinking, at the open doorway, but it didn’t come back. Whatever it was. Behind him, he could hear Clint and Judy chatting while she showed him the bedrooms.

“The listing mentioned a basement apartment…?” Clint said.

“Empty,” Judy replied. “In fact, all the units are currently unoccupied. If you know anyone looking for a place to live, you’ll give them my number.” It wasn’t a question, it was a direct order. Bucky chuckled in spite of himself at Clint’s mumbled “yes, ma’am,” then turned to face them when he heard their returning footsteps. Still, he kept one eye on the front door.

“Well, Mr. Barnes?” Judy prompted with a smile. Clint cast his vote by flashing his friend two thumbs up over her shoulder.

Bucky hesitated, exhaled through his nose, and watched her face fall. He knew that she knew what was coming. “Sure, it’s exactly what we’ve been looking for,” he began tactfully, “quiet neighborhood, close to the park. It ticks all the boxes. But I can’t help wondering, why the trouble finding tenants?”

Judy crossed her arms. “Let’s just say the building has history. What building in New York doesn’t?” Clearly, she was hoping that would signal the end of the conversation. But even Clint stepped around her to stare expectantly. At last, she dropped her arms at her sides with a sigh. “About a year ago, a young lady died in her apartment. Third floor. It was grisly enough to make the news, poor thing, but there hasn’t been so much as a bike theft on this block since.” Frowning, Judy glanced between them. “You understand why I didn’t bring it up. People can be very skittish when they hear a story like that. And rightly so,” she conceded.

Bucky and Clint exchanged a look before Bucky grasped his friend’s shoulder to march him out of the apartment. “‘Scuse us, would you?” he said to Judy.

They stood silent on the landing, near another dusty flight of stairs connecting the second floor to the third. The alleged scene of the crime. Before Bucky could remark that he suddenly felt they were being watched, Clint started counting off his fingers.

“Okay. Pros: it’s stupidly cheap; the toilet doesn’t run; the water doesn’t smell like boiled eggs; there are approximately zero mouseholes; I can use the basement to wolf out every month.” Brief pause, during which Bucky could hear Clint’s heart beat excitedly like a drum. “Cons: none.”

Bucky frowned. “Hey. Someone died here.”

Clint gawked at him. “Seriously? That’s a hard line for you? _You?”_ At Bucky’s narrowing eyes, Clint was quick to apologize. “But you know what I meant. I thought you’d be, like, immune to that kind of thing.”

“Thanks, pal,” Bucky snorted. His gaze slid away from Clint and toward the second staircase as he added, “Respect for the dead wasn’t invented by your generation--” His sentence cut short. On the third floor landing stood the figure, the one that took a peek through their doorway. It floated halfway down the stairs and sat itself on a step.

“Have all the respect you want, man. Just, are we moving in or not?” When he didn’t get an answer, Clint waved his hand in front of Bucky’s stunned face. “Barnes? Hello?” Perplexed, he drew back and slowly turned to look in the same direction. His stomach tangled itself like Christmas lights.

The girl on the stairs watched them with a glum expression, chin in her hands and her long, dark hair framing a pale and very pretty face. She then seemed to notice that they weren’t staring through her, as she might have expected. They were staring _at her._ Eyes growing wide and hopeful, she pulled her hands away from her face to clasp them tightly in her lap instead.

“Can you see me?” she asked in a whisper.

Clint’s mouth sprang open and closed as he grappled for something to say. He’d never seen a ghost before. The longer he looked at her, the more solid she appeared until he could make out the finest detail, down to the number of silver rings on her fingers.

“Yeah,” Bucky said softly, slanting a stupefied little grin at her. “Hi. Looks like we’re gonna be neighbors.”


	2. Chapter 2

Her name was Wanda Maximoff.

Before she died, she was studying jewelry design and sharing an apartment with her twin brother Pietro, a fast rising college track star. Originally from Sokovia, a small Eastern European country in the grips of civil unrest, their parents were killed in a shelling when they were only 10. They were sent to live with relatives in Sheepshead Bay and never spent longer than a weekend apart until Wanda’s own untimely death. Pietro moved into on-campus housing shortly after her funeral.

Those were the details of her life she shared with Bucky and Clint over the following weeks, after they stunned their real estate agent by deciding to sign the lease on the second-floor unit. Wanda was grateful for the continued use of her own private space on the third floor, which she promised to show them… someday. In the meantime, she became a fixture in their apartment, brewing black tea on cold days and watching them drink from their cups with a dull mingle of contentment and longing.

She’d been indescribably lonely since she died, and too fearful to leave the building to be out among people. _What if I can’t get back in?_ she fretted. It was a strange but persistent thought that kept her hidden behind curtains, listening to the sounds of life outside, and hurting for company. In her lowest moments, she talked to the wall that separated her old bedroom from her brother’s, and imagined him with his ear pressed to the other side.

But once Bucky and Clint moved in downstairs, the long, unbroken chain of her lonely days were replaced with laughter, music, the cheerful clink of beer bottles on the weekends; a renewed sense of belonging in a world that had moved on without her. When they weren’t up late talking or teaching Wanda how to play cards, the three of them were crammed onto the couch in front of the television, watching 1980s action comedies (with the odd appearance by a ninja) until the boys’ drooping heads rested on her shoulders. Suddenly, she had a different reason not to leave the building.

Or so she fooled herself into believing for a while. As her friendship with Bucky and Clint grew, so did her desire, even her determination, to venture outside until it almost overwhelmed her fear of being locked out. And would that really be so bad? There were birds outside, and pretzel vendors; bookstores and playgrounds; life itself. And there was also Pietro, out there somewhere, missing her just as desperately as she missed him.

* * *

“There’s that guy again,” Clint remarked one bright Thursday morning, leaning on a shoulder to gaze out the window as he munched his third or maybe fourth bowl of cereal.

“What guy?” Bucky asked from his seat at the kitchen table. He’d been preoccupied with a local news piece on his phone for the last half-hour: an attack at a nursing home; lacerations to the neck and shoulders. By some miracle, the victim was expected to survive.

“The young guy,” Clint said. “From last week? Bleached hair. Tracksuit-- Jesus, Wanda!” Milk and soggy cereal splashed out of his bowl and onto his T-shirt as she suddenly appeared beside him. She stood frozen with her face close to the glass.

Bucky finally lifted his head as Clint rushed past him to change into a clean shirt. His eyebrows drew together as he gazed curiously at Wanda. “Someone you know?”

“Someone I know very well.” She pressed her forehead to the window. “My brother.”

Bucky’s chair scraped across the floor as he pushed back from the table and stood up to join her. There, pacing on the sidewalk, puffing breath after cloudy breath, which gave them both the distinct impression that he’d run there all the way from campus, was the twin brother he’d heard so much about. But the adoring description of Pietro as a flirt, a prankster, and a protector didn’t gel with the man they were looking at now. He was wan and underfed; and his eyes, which Wanda had compared to the glacial blue of the Baltic Sea, were flat and gray.

“What am I missing?” Clint came up on them from behind, fastening the last button on his shirt. Bucky filled him in, and Clint’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “No shit? When I saw him last week, he asked if I lived here. Thought he might’a been casing the place.” Clint then lowered his voice and commented in a pitying tone, “He looks terrible.”

“Let’s invite him in,” Bucky said suddenly, turning away from the window.

Wanda appeared in a blink between him and the door and fiercely shook her head.

“Just for a few minutes. You can hide if you’re worried about him seeing you,” he told her gently.

Wanda didn’t budge, and even held out her arms to demonstrate how serious she was. She knew her brother well enough to know that just being in the presence of the building was torture for him after what happened to his little sister. After all, he was the one who found her.

Bucky opened his mouth to bargain with her again, but Clint cut him off with a surprisingly stern, “Drop it, Barnes. It’s not your family we’re talking about, it’s hers.”

Duly scolded, Bucky held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I just think it’s worth thinking about, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, he’s gone anyway,” Clint said, craning his neck to watch Pietro’s retreat. He was already at the end of the block, his feet pounding the pavement and his bag thudding against his back as he ran. Clint let out an impressed whistle. “Damn. He really is like the wind.”

A smile flickered across Wanda’s face. Bucky noticed it, felt another pang of regret, and caught her eye. “I’m sorry,” he mouthed at her.

“It’s okay,” she mouthed back. Then, to Clint: “Don’t you have somewhere to be - and someone to finally ask out for drinks?”

“Oh, God,” Clint groaned, rubbing the side of his face with his hand. “You had to remind me.” He grabbed his keys off the bowl on the coffee table and stuffed them in his pocket as he bent to kiss Wanda’s cheek, then impulsively kissed Bucky’s cheek as well on his way to the door. Laughing, Bucky hastened his exit with a kick to his ass.

“I oughta get going, too,” he said, sobering up a little as he remembered the article about the attack. “Meeting an old friend.” He glanced at Wanda as he put on his coat. “You gonna be alright?”

She nodded, although her frown betrayed how upset she really was. “My heart breaks seeing him like that.” Her voice was tight and tearful.

Wordlessly, Bucky drew her into a hug and kissed her opposite cheek. As a ghost, there was and always would be an invisible barrier between their bodies. Wanda felt the pressure of his arms around her, just not the warmth of his skin through his clothes; and she felt the pressure of his mouth, just not the shape of his lips. But it was a blessing to feel anything at all. Sniffling, she thanked him when he pulled back.

After he left, and she was alone, to ward off the familiar crawling panic that she really would be alone forever this time, she wondered if inviting Pietro in _was_ actually worth thinking about. Even if they could never risk her being seen, it would be worth it to hear his voice from the next room; to listen to him open up to Bucky and Clint and develop a wonderful friendship with them as she had.

With just a thought, Wanda summoned a notebook and a pen from the depths of the overcrowded bookshelf, sat in Bucky’s chair at the kitchen table, and began to brainstorm a plan.


End file.
